Ghosts of War

While the book has just started there are certain mentalities of this high school student who was sitting in class when the planes hit the towers.  He knew that the country was going to war over this but that was when he decided that he was going to join the military.  "If I don't do it, then who will." this is probably what many people in that age group was thinking after the towers fell that if they do not act then nobody else will.  Why does a student who could go into many other fields of study in college decide that, knowing that a massive war is going to breakout at some point, join the military reserves? Nationalism,  when something happens to the country we live in, some people feel like the military is the only option. In american studies we read an article by Barbara Kingsolver that said nationalism destroys countries and people as soon as muslims were targeted, a man went out shooting at other neighbors who were foreign born. Is this situation the same? Is he going into the Army to protect the country or to seek vengeance against the people who did this crime?

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Race and Class

Everyone no matter how much they may say that they are not racist, have their prejudices.  In some cases this effects the case and the whole saying that “justice is blind” because people are not blind (unless they are in which case a jury of blind men and women would be the best jury if no one told them race or ethnicity).  I believe that our justice system does a pretty good job at making sure only guilty people do go to prison, but we are human and we do make mistakes and we do make judgments of people whether it is based off of race or other reasons.  Part of a first impression is the silence before anyone starts talking, judgment unfortunately happens and that “wrongful” judgment could result in a major wrong doing.

Law and Politics

People in this country and elsewhere had early laws, if a person is caught stealing they get their hands cut off, this effectively stopping them from stealing.  We come from these laws and roots, people think that an eye for an eye would bring out a lesson to others thinking of carrying out the same crime.  Also many families know that murdering the murderer won’t do anything to bring back their loved ones, but they feel like killing the accused would make them believe the killer got what s/he deserved.

The Bigger Picture

There is no possible way for any state to come up with a foolproof plan on who gets the death penalty and who does not.  Every crime is different and carried out in different ways; therefore, all people of the jury and the United States would feel different about every case. Some would say the death penalty is needed for all murders and rapes, others would say it is not and, others still would say it depends on if the person in question murdered two people or one or if the suspect tortured them before killing them, etc. There cannot be one single answer to everyone’s problems because everyone thinks differently.  A margin of error is acceptable because that means the justice system came close to perfecting the conviction rate of innocent people and less than 1% of people sentenced to death being innocent would be a somewhat acceptable number because it is relatively low and the innocent can still plea their innocence through the clemency process.

Death penalty class work

In the case of capital punishment (the death penalty) there exists many steps the accused and the state must go through that are designed to protect the individual on trial. The Grand Jury has to decide whether there is sufficient evidence in the case for the suspect to even go to a trial that would determine a guilty/innocent verdict.  After that the trail then goes to the death/ no death trails, a trail to determine the penalty for the crime.

The steps involving the grand jury help to protect the accused by determining the validity of the evidence the police and investigators found. Then during the guilty phase the jury is well vetted and asked whether or not they could provide a fair decision by determining based off of testimony the guilt of the defendant. Then the penalty phase has the death or life in prison decision in which the aggravating factors vs. the mitigating factors are weighed against each other, once done the jury recommends life or death then the judge formally states the sentence, to protect the defendant some states allow the judge to reverse the jury’s decision and in others the judge must do what the jury says (this does not help the defendant).

 From this point in the process to getting a death penalty sentence I do not believe to be sufficient.  In the beginning of the article it said that a capital case that would warrant the death penalty is usually a case that has a lot of people in the town the crime was committed very upset and desperate to find the killer.  The case might even have national coverage and then people may still be hurried to sentence someone to death.  Therefore, if a jury really wanted to they could get past all these safe guards and despite innocent’s sentence a suspect who did not do the crime to death.  

The next steps after the guilty verdict allows for the guilty to prove through other evidence that there was some sort of mistake in the procedure that carried out the sentence on him.  However with limits in some states on how long after the sentence new evidence can be submitted I do not see how this might help.  If I was a police officer arrest a murderer who was later found guilty and sentenced to death, then that case is done I found the guy, he was guilty and given a punishment why would I search for new evidence saying I was wrong about the guy I caught.

The next step reviews the case and the punishment if something in the process of the trials were wrong, i.e. the prosecutor did something to screw with the case or a juror was not a fair choice in the decision a retrial could be scheduled. Clemency allows the death row inmate to be re considered for a lesser sentence.  

While I believe that there is always a way to defeat the system as a whole I believe at this ending point in the procedures before the execution is given I also believe that there is enough opportunity for an “out” from the death penalty for the accused to be sufficiently protected in certain states. Because different states have different rules and protections.

In Methods I believe that the lethal injection is the most humane because the prisoner is put to sleep before the injection is given.  The gas chamber, hanging, electric chair, and firing squad are inhuman as the prisoner could get injured without dyeing instantly in the hanging there is too much room for error despite the rehearsal that they do before. The electric chair does not insure a painless death and the gas chamber takes to long.  Anything that takes to long to execute the prisoners with pain is cruel to make the prisoner suffer for a while before.  In the lethal injection the prisoner feels nothing.

The results are mixed there is no evidence that deterrence works in the death penalty.  The crime rate is lowest in the states that have little to no executions which means that the death penalty does not work to deter people from committing acts of murder.  This means that people would commit murders even if they know that s/he would be killed for it.

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I personally think that the death penalty has more pros then it does cons.

Pros:
gets a convicted murderer or rapist off of the streets for good with no chance of escape or coming back.
the tax payers do not need to pay for the convict to have three meals a day and for the general up keep of the persons living conditions until time of death.

cons:
It is murdering someone for murdering someone which follows Gandhi's saying, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" which to me is making the supporters of the death penalty openly and support the death of every inmate sentenced might make the person as worse as the murderer, morally.

I think this brings into questions is one mans death necessary for the good of others effected by a serial killer? and if we can morally carry out this sentence.  From a money perspective I honestly rather have the government pay for one lethal injections rather than hundreds of meals for someone who may just die in prison never actually leading a life outside of prison for years.  From a different perspective i also think it is wrong.  I guess it depends on the situation. Boggess seems like he has changed however he did murder two people for money and admits that he enjoyed it I cannot really chose a side because of my conflicted beliefs in the matter.

Students right to privacy

The court says that students should not expect any right to privacy while on school grounds.  They claim that the Fourth Amendment "Does not require a finding of individualized suspicion." meaning that drug test can be done on everyone even without reasonable cause to test; and individualizing the test to suspicious student would make the teachers jobs harder because they need to teach and look out for students who seem to be under the influence of controlled substances. The need to get rid of drugs in schools outweighs the students right to privacy "The safety interests furthered by drug testing is UNDOUBTEDLY substantial for ALL children, athletes and nonathletes alike." whether a student is competitive or in choir the need for drug testing in the school was substantial enough to show that this drug testing is constitutional. Both Acton and Earls ruled in favor of drug tests on students.

Both cases state that "due to the minimally intrusive procedures..." they find "the invasion of students' privacy is not significant."  I do not believe that this is the case while the procedure is relatively private because no one is watching while the sample is being produced, the principle of the matter is if the person getting tested never does drugs and all they want to do is sing in choir and others are assuming that the person in question is doing drugs; if it were me I would be offended.  So while I agree with the court that if there is a large drug problem and it needs to be taken care of immediately then go ahead and test me, but as far as the procedure being annoying and just rude to assume that I would do drugs because everyone else in the school might also be doing them is just a waste of my time if all I want to do after school is build and paint things for a theater production. 

Overall I am glade that we have a right to not be strip searched without reasonable cause.  I do however think that dogs in school would be a good idea if everyone in the world were not allergic to them or if they did not cost the school 500$ a dog.